Hints and thoughts about Management, Strategies, Team Building, Admin, basics, Trends, the Future and other topics.

Saturday, 10 December 2011

The importance of selling your company name and logo

If you retail in the market for interchangeable consumer goods, it’s important to build up the customer knowledge of your brand. You should take every opportunity to display your logo and just as important, your brand name. It is easier to get shelf space in a chain of stores if their customers already request your product. And the only way they can know it is by you marketing it to them. This can take many forms. Traditional advertising in papers, on tv or radio. Or more modern forms like website, Wikipedia, or social media like Twitter, Facebook or Google+ A combination is often required to reach momentum.

To get repeat custom they also need to know that it was your product they purchased. That means displaying your brand name and logo very clearly on the product, and not be happy with a small mention in the nearly visible text on the pricing label..

It is surprising how many, that have worked a while in the same company, take it for granted that everybody knows about it. The truth is that many times I where in contact with people from the UK who was asking Ryanair who, when I contacted them about something else than travel. People might not associate the company if the query is unrelated to its most visible activity. Also a company well known in a local area might be nearly unknown outside that area. This can be an issue if your marketing people are local and you are trying to market nationally, or even globally.

If you have a website, it’s important to visualise your product on it. If they click the button products there should be pictures of what you can actually purchase, with proudly displayed logos and company name. Try to find a way of selling your product on the web also. There usually is some way of making a variant of the product that can have a longer lifespan so it can be shipped by cheapest way. It will introduce them nicely to your product range and there will be no delay between seeing and purchasing. Get good deals on shipping to as many destinations as possible and display them on your website. You never know where the next purchaser might be from. Selling online can be done very cheaply using established payment channels like paypal. and can take little effort to accomplish. What is most important is that it gives you a way of better controlling the presentation of the product. On your site there is no big supermarket chain that sets a markup pricing you above your competitor, or give you inferior shelf space.

If you insist on not selling directly, lead potential customers from your product page to outlets that will do your product. And make sure regularly that they actually still do. A customer will not like to travel to a store to get your product and then discover that they don’t stock it after all.